My Internet: Anthony Fantano
The Needle Drop music critic doesn’t need any more rugby shirts from Depop.
Every other week we quiz a “very online” person for their essential guide to what’s good on the internet.
Today we welcome Anthony Fantano, the founder of The Needle Drop and almost certainly the most influential music critic of the last decade. Anthony, who submitted his answers in a voice note, is followed on Twitter by the president of Brazil and just had to roll his eyes when Joe Rogan was blown away by an AI soul version of 50 Cent’s “Many Men (Wish Death).” —Nick
EMBEDDED: What’s a recent meme or post that made you laugh?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I was kind of dying laughing when I saw these two people make their two ChatGPT chatbots chat. If you’ve ever heard one of these chatbots speak before, saying like, “Absolutely, I’m just here to help” and “Totally here for the vibes” and “Just let me know if there’s anything I can do”—they basically had these two chatbots on an infinite loop responding to each other in that way. It was just so funny that they couldn’t pick up on the fact that they were just two chatbots, pointlessly and endlessly interacting with each other and saying nothing of substance. It was a great depiction of the times that we live in, in terms of how pointless and brainless a lot of online activity is right now.
EMBEDDED: Do you tweet? Why?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Most of my tweets right now are [links to] posts on my website, news posts and updates and that sort of thing. Everything that I’m tweeting outside of that is usually me battling with political freaks and right-wing weirdos. I think it’s important to voice dissent and distaste with the current state of things. Outside of that, Twitter is pretty ugly and unusable right now.
EMBEDDED: Do you post on Bluesky, Threads, or Substack’s Notes? Why?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Not really. I do have an account on Threads because it is a little bit more sane over there, and I post more kind of like idle music-based thoughts over there than I do on Twitter, where things can get pretty ugly for no reason whatsoever.
EMBEDDED: What do you use Instagram for?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Mostly short form video and posts and TikTok-based vertical content, that sort of thing. Occasionally some pictures and fit pics here and there; I’m trying to get more back into doing that a little bit more.
EMBEDDED: What types of videos do you watch on YouTube?
ANTHONY FANTANO: A lot of political content. The Majority Report. Adam Friedland Show. A lot of interview content, social commentary-type content. Maybe some video essays here and there, lately on economics and that sort of thing.
EMBEDDED: What do you like about TikTok? What do you dislike?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I like how fast-paced and funny TikTok is. What I dislike is how difficult the platform makes it for creators to offload users onto other platforms where maybe a creator could more effectively monetize, sell merch, get followers to listen to a song, something like that. I find how closed-in, penned-in TikTok tries to make its user base to be a very upsetting and annoying.
EMBEDDED: Were you concerned by TikTok remaining under Chinese control? Are you concerned about it coming under the control of President Trump’s allies?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Obviously under Chinese control things were not ideal, but I feel like it being purchased and sold off to an American-based entity that is going to bend to the whims of potentially whatever US administration is in office, capitalist interests and all that, that’s not going to be good. I feel like that’s only going to give us worse results then what we’ve already been experiencing on TikTok in terms of free speech suppression, the narrowing of discourse, the Overton window, algorithmic-based echo chambers, that sort of thing.
EMBEDDED: Where do you tend to get your news?
ANTHONY FANTANO: A lot of leftists news outlets on social media for the most part. Democracy Now as well, and news standards like AP, Reuters, CNN, that sort of thing.
EMBEDDED: How do you keep up with the online discourse? How important is it to you to do this?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Mostly on Twitter and TikTok. Again, not primarily where I get my news, but if I want to know what people are saying about the news or what they think about the news. I try to use those places [keeping in mind] the fact that there’s also, especially on Twitter, a lot of bots that are always kind of poisoning the discourse and making conversations way worse than they need to be.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last strong opinion you had about a story, topic, or controversy online?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I did a video about some discourse I’ve seen bubbling up online about [Spotify] Wrapped fatigue, which I don’t think is a thing. Not only because I feel like some people are blowing it out of proportion, but what a lot of people describe as Wrapped fatigue is just fatigue with how repetitive they feel. Like a lot of the mainstream slop that is categorized as rap music that is handed to them by streaming platforms—a lot of people who are talking about rap music being stale don’t really have a lot of knowledge about the genre beyond what is handed to us on the surface level. They don’t know how versatile the genre is, and cheering on [its] downfall or lack of popularity is, I feel, kind of based in racism.
EMBEDDED: What’s a popular misconception that you see repeated online?
ANTHONY FANTANO: There are so many. Maybe the most annoying and persistent is that if someone’s rich, that must be because they’re smart and they worked really hard for that money. That’s probably the most popular one.
EMBEDDED: What are your favorite newsletters?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I don’t really subscribe to any newsletters, honestly.
EMBEDDED: How do you think Substack has changed media, if at all?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I suppose it has because it’s given journalists who have had a difficult time finding work, stable work in an increasingly turbulent media environment, the potential to forge their own path and build their own brands. But honestly, I feel like journalists need the freedom and support to do proper journalism. Going the Substack model—given the current state of things, I don’t begrudge anyone doing that—but it puts journalists in a position where they have, in a way, to become social media stars. That can be very time consuming and take time away from necessary journalistic practice.
EMBEDDED: What’s one positive media trend? What’s one negative trend?
ANTHONY FANTANO: The negative trend is a lot of bots and fake accounts and paid internet operatives poisoning the well around a lot of different topics with disinformation. The positive trend is people hating AI.
EMBEDDED: Do you have a take on the “manosphere”? Do you think personalities like Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and Theo Von have shaped young men’s political leanings?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I think it goes beyond them, unfortunately, but yeah, I do think they have. Either that or they’re validating perceptions that come baked in with how men are often socialized in the United States. The discourse around there is just so stupid and boring that I don’t really engage with it outside of maybe any viral clips that I might catch in passing, where these people are making total morons of themselves. Most recently I saw Joe Rogan just being blown away by some weird AI soul version of 50 Cent’s “Many Men (Wish Death).” It was just so moronic I had to roll my eyes.
EMBEDDED: Do you have any advice for people who use sports betting apps or prediction markets?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Don’t use them. That’s my advice. I don’t use them. You’re basically flushing your money down the toilet. Don’t do that.
EMBEDDED: Is the AI bubble about to burst?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I mean, unless it finds a way to legitimately turn a profit, it’s going to burst at some point. I’m not really in the prediction business, so I don’t know if I can say it’s literally about to burst right now. I do want AI to go away. I hope it doesn’t happen in a fashion to where it blows up and takes down a chunk of the economy with it, because obviously that’s going to have ripple effects that impact the most unfortunate among us.
EMBEDDED: Do you believe that the “artificial general intelligence” and “superintelligence” that many AI boosters have warned of actually pose a risk to humanity?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I guess we’re talking in a very hypothetical, Skynet kind of way? I suppose the chances aren’t zero. But if it’s going to exist, I feel like we could harness it to where it actually serves the average person. We’d be better for it.
EMBEDDED: Are smartphones bad for us? Where do you fall on the Jonathan Haidt-Taylor Lorenz divide?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Personally, I haven’t seen them debate on the topic. I guess I don’t think the smartphones are bad for us as much as the apps are bad for us, and the apps are bad for us because they’re all trying to maximize profits. Again, instead of serving people, these platforms are trying to devise ways to just keep them endlessly locked into these platforms and turn people into dopamine fiends. I’ve been on the internet for a huge chunk of my life and have made a living on the internet professionally for over a decade now. It didn’t always used to be this way. It got this way because the money that these companies were making, they decided it wasn’t enough, and they needed to find ways to further squeeze time and money out of people.
EMBEDDED: Do you try to limit your phone use? If so, what methods have been helpful for this?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I’ve been trying to read more, I’ve been trying to make more beats. I’ve been trying to exercise more. Anything that is a hobby or an activity that does not involve the phone.
EMBEDDED: What’s something that you have observed about the online behavior of Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and/or Boomers?
ANTHONY FANTANO: If anything kind of grosses me out with all of ‘em across the board, it’s that there’s too much generational animosity going on between everybody. I feel like we have more in common than we don’t, as average people, as a working class. The one thing that I will say, though, is that it’s very sad to see people of my own generation getting weirdly conservative as they age.
EMBEDDED: How do you find recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Friends of mine who are very big into film. As far as what I like to read, [it’s] a lot of music-based stuff. Right now I’m still grinding through Kim Gordon’s memoir. As far as what to listen to, I mostly get my recommendations from my viewers and from different record labels that I follow.
EMBEDDED: Have you had posts go viral? What is that experience like?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Yes. It depends on what it’s going viral for. Is it going viral for something that I do for my job, or is it going viral because of the weirdness of the “It’s enough slices” meme.
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I’m not just the Internet’s busiest music nerd. I’m the guy who one time screamed on TikTok. The sound of that video went so viral that it’s been completely separated from me personally. There are probably millions of people who have heard it that have no clue who the heck I am. There are lots of people who have heard it who know me and watch my content and then later find out that it’s me, and they’re like, what? It’s very funny to have something out there that you’re known for, but simultaneously people don’t know you for.
EMBEDDED: Who’s the coolest person who follows you?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Oh, that’s a good question. The president of Brazil, Lula de Silva, follows me on Twitter, which I think is a pretty incredible flex, honestly.
EMBEDDED: Who’s someone more people should follow?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Connor O’Malley and Joe Perra.
EMBEDDED: Which big celebrity has your favorite internet presence, and why?
ANTHONY FANTANO: John Cena. He just does the weirdest, most random Instagram posts that just make no sense whatsoever.
EMBEDDED: Are you into any podcasts right now? How and when do you usually listen?
ANTHONY FANTANO: They’re not podcasts, but I’m big into these book breakdowns from Nikki Carreon. Very cool. She dives into these terrible and salacious and often very wild and offensive romance books that pop off on TikTok.
EMBEDDED: Have you ever been heavily into Snapchat? Do you miss it? When was the last time you browsed Pinterest? What for?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Never been into Snapchat, never been into Pinterest.
EMBEDDED: How would you describe Tumblr’s legacy?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I was on Tumblr, but I never used it enough to really probably describe its legacy accurately.
EMBEDDED: Are you in any groups on Reddit, Discord, Slack, or Facebook? What’s the most useful or entertaining one?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I do have a Fantano forever Reddit, and I monitor it every once in a while, but it’s not something I’m deeply ingrained in.
EMBEDDED: What is your Wordle starting word?
ANTHONY FANTANO: For a while it was CHORE, if I remember correctly. Or CHAIR.
EMBEDDED: Do any of your group chats have a name that you’re willing to share? What’s something that recently inspired debate in the chat?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I don’t have any group chats.
EMBEDDED: What’s your go-to emoji, and what does it mean to you?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Probably the emoji with the two hands sticking up in the air together. To me, that’s just like, hype—like yeah, heck yeah, I’m hype. I also use the thumbs up and the okay sign too.
EMBEDDED: Do you text people voice notes? If not, how do you feel about getting them?
ANTHONY FANTANO: For a minute, I was actually kind of notorious for this. I’m doing a voice note now. Sometimes just faster to say it than it is to type it, and sometimes I just feel more natural yapping than I do writing something out. How do I feel about getting them? It depends upon the person and what they’re doing. If they’re telling me something they could have just said easilyor very quickly over text, I would’ve preferred a text. But if it’s conversational or if they’re telling me about their day and it’s somebody who I know intimately, then yeah, sure, send me a voice note.
EMBEDDED: Do you pay for a music streaming service, and if so, which one? What’s a playlist, song, album, or style of music you’ve listened to a lot lately?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I do Apple Music. I’ve listened to a lot lately the new Viagra Boys album, the new Geese album, the new Clipse album, the new SPELLLING album. Those have been all my favorites lately, according to my Apple Music replay for 2025.
EMBEDDED: What’s your favorite non-social media app?
ANTHONY FANTANO: For a while it was the Pokémon Trading Card Game Live, but I haven’t been playing lately, honestly.
EMBEDDED: What’s the most basic internet thing that you love?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Message boards. Not that I’ve gone on any lately, but I miss them as a cultural hub, the old school way that they used to operate. Also, old school flash cartoons.
EMBEDDED: Is there any content you want but can’t seem to find anywhere online?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Not really.
EMBEDDED: Do you regularly use eBay, Depop, or other shopping platforms? What’s a recent thing you’ve bought or sold?
ANTHONY FANTANO: For a while, I used Depop quite a bit to get old rugby shirts, but I haven’t done it lately. I have enough rugby shirts. I don’t need any more rugby shirts.
EMBEDDED: Is there a site you like for product recommendations? How do you decide, for example, which air filter to buy?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Not really.
EMBEDDED: Have you recently read an article, book, or social media post about the internet that you’ve found particularly insightful?
ANTHONY FANTANO: I’ve seen some think pieces about the enshittification of the internet that I agree with. That’s probably one of the most relevant critiques on that front right now.
EMBEDDED: What’s the last thing that brought you joy online?
ANTHONY FANTANO: Seeing a bunch of people react positively to the photographs that I posted from the Spartan race that I did this past summer. That brought me a lot of joy.
Thanks Anthony! Visit his website, subscribe to his YouTube and Twitch channels, and follow him on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. 🙌
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